Self Improvement

2010. Our first glance at the tens column of the 21^st century and our last look back at the decade that we haven’t even hammered out a name for yet. This Friday at 12:00 AM, every alive person on the planet will have survived 2009. And every second of the 31, 556, 926 seconds in the upcoming year will determine whether in 2020 we will say, “2010 – what a great year,” or “what a hard year,” or, “what happened that year?”

I’ve never been that much into resolutions because I’ve never needed to lose weight, but this year, I’m taking change seriously. I don’t want to just “get through” 2010; I want to conquer it. I want to arrive at 2011 the way that I finish 5k races: smiling triumphantly and wheezing like I’ve simultaneously gotten pneumonia and had an asthma attack. So here is my list. It’s short (if you disregard all of my commentary), but it’s meaty. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

1. Blog more.

I admit it: I don’t just write this blog because I want to share my valuable revelations with the world. Revelations are 90% of the reason that I write it. But there’s another 10% that I’ve been keeping a secret until now because it’s embarrassing to say. Here it is: if I get enough people to read this blog, Google will pay me (in money) to keep it up. This may seem like a natural cause and effect to you, but for young writers, being paid to write gives us this odd sensation that we are scamming people. In my writing classes, professors are tirelessly reminding us that they are teaching us how to get paid to write. I imagine this is less of a topic of discussion with accounting majors, who rarely seem to fear that they will end up living in their step-grandparent’s basement because they won’t be able to support themselves from the compulsive 2 AM budget balancing that they do by candle light in a cat hair covered Snuggie. So every time one of you adds yourself as a “follower” on the right hand side bar of my website, I feel like Jesus did every time he recruited another disciple: overall excited about my extended ability to do good in the world, but initially just shocked that I could con another sucker into buying this thing.

Therefore, I must blog more. By resolving to provide you with more thought-provoking and entertaining posts, I am increasing the chances that someone will want to advertise hand-carved, polished, stone beads on the sidebar of Three Squares blog. I can just imagine myself, hands trembling as I open my first envelope from the internet/money people. My eyes will widen, and then a sly smile will curl up on my face as I shove that $10 check in the face of my tuition bills.

2. Send myself out to play more.

There are two types of memories: ones that you remember and ones that you forget. Over the course of this past fall semester, I have forgotten most of my essay writing memories, and my tv watching memories, and my working at the gym memories. The stuff I do remember tends to be activities that were more daring, spontaneous, and just plain different than what I usually do. I remember dance parties, the photoshoot in Scott’s hats, the night we played Queens, the night me and Trevor worked on the France puzzle for like 5 hours and finished it, the one night of the semester Allyson and I did crunches, Fakesgiving, the fire out at Ian’s Bear Grylls-inspired shelter, and the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet *.

The reason I bring this up is because those nights – the ones I remember most –weren’t necessarily more fun than staying in and watching Say Yes to the Dress, but they do have a story behind them, which automatically makes them better memories. Going on an adventure -- especially if it’s freezing cold, late at night, and a little dangerous – puts you in an exclusive club. Only you and who ever you were with can claim to have done what you did, even if it seems more fun in retrospect than it really was. Our stories belong to us. And that’s what the value of a life comes down to, isn’t it? The great and terrible things we remember doing. I figure if I’m going to do something in 2010, it might as well be something I remember. That’s why I’m resolving to try new things, do old things that I know are good for me, and send myself out to play more often.

I realize my list only has two items on it, but I figure I might as well do a super job on two resolutions than do an okay job on many. If I set too many goals, I’ll probably just get overwhelmed and not start anything, anyways. Plus, it’s 2 AM and I’m getting over-heated in my Snuggie. Happy New Year to all and make it a good one.

* The World’s Tallest Filing cabinet resides in Burlington, VT. If you would like to know what it looks like, picture a rusty filing cabinet with all the drawer handles broken off in the middle of a barren field/abandoned lot. Now vertically multiply the filing cabinet by 15. That’s more or less how it is, but I encourage you to go have a look for yourself.

Store Bought: Part 13

When Judy died, she branded her initials, JDP, in swirly blue letters on everyone who remembers her. And with that one dramatic stamp, we each became her. Everything that we loved about her – how she knew when to laugh at herself, how she could choose the perfect shade of paint for a room, how she let people enjoy each other’s company by giving them a big kitchen table and a bag of M&Ms – became our tradition to keep. And we have. For every medium regular coffee, and bunch of yellow roses, and puff of Chanel No. 5 in which we have indulged to make Judy sensory and tangible again, there has been another time that we have scheduled election day into our calendars, had the courage to be no-nonsense about an issue, and decided to turn up the radio and sing when it’s midnight and we’ve got seventy five more miles to go. Those are what make us whole again. The products are our comfort, but her character is our salvation.

Store Bought: Part 12

Our brands do not define our legacies, but they do fill them out and give them shape, which is why what we buy says so much about who we are. I am satisfied that my history will include TJ Maxx, Prismacolor colored pencils, and the pancake recipe on page 126 of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. They aren’t particularly luxurious items, but they make me truly happy, which is a rare quality in the products that I use.

Store Bought: Part 11

Gaudiness, tackiness, or impracticality has no relevance when you sort out someone’s house after the funeral. Everything from their diamond rings to the Cream of Wheat in their pantry can be an heirloom. Their personality becomes an heirloom as well. They will always be the person who ate toast with jam for breakfast, and was not afraid to buy herself diamonds, and stubbornly asserted that everyone should have a nice, neutral suit in their closet because they don’t want to have to be rushing out to Filene’s Basement at the last moment to get one. Death is an opportunity to accept this. Even if you consider yourself a humble and non-material person, wearing a gold ring that has the pull of ten diamonds at your finger keeps reminding you, “This is your mother’s. Make her proud.”

We don’t need Chanel No. 5 and Tiffany’s to remember who Judy was. We love them because they were her indulgences, and therefore ours. What we really need are the memories of her that we are surprised to find in each other.

Store Bought: Part 10

In high school, we talked about middle school. I went to St. Augustine Catholic School, where gym class was held in the carpeted basement off of the girls’ bathroom. Our sixth grade English teacher wore flamingo-print shirts and spent a week’s worth of class time showing us slides from her vacation in Alaska. The cafeteria served baked bologna. These stories speckled our high school lunch tables and bus trips to Mt. Blue for cross-country meets.

In college, nobody else has ever heard of baked bologna, so we have to talk about the only things we have common: TV, video games, and cereal. Everyone at college remembers Legends of the Hidden Temple, Mario Kart, and Count Chocula cereal. Except me. I remember Zoom, Klutz books, and Berry Berry Kix. Consequently, during these conversations, I usually direct my attention back to the television or think about what I should make for dinner, because there’s no use in trying to change the subject. A conversation about childhood nostalgia is a freight train. Every detail reminds someone of something else, so the conversation picks up momentum quickly, and pretty soon if any non-video-game-playing pansy who doesn’t know a single Hanson song steps in the way of it, she’s going to get squashed.

People are passionate about their childhood products. Walk into a room filled with children of the 90s and shout, “I hate Spice World! Nerf guns are for losers!” You’ll quickly find that you have just made a lot of enemies. The interesting part of this phenomenon is that the crappier the products were the more protective people are of them. Think of pogs and wax lips and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. They are all intensely stupid, and that’s what makes them so popular. It’s instinct for us to stick up for our childhood products, because those are our personal histories. If you tell someone that the TV show they spent 500 hours of their childhood watching is dumb, you are insulting 500 hours of their existence. Nobody ever remembers that for 465 of those hours that they watched TV it was because they were bored and no one would play UNO or basketball with them. People remember the time they were watching the show with their brother and he laughed so hard that Sprite squirted out of his nose. They remember that snow day when they came in from epic fort–making and watched the show while they drank hot chocolate and felt their toes tingle back to life.

It’s impossible not to be biased about our childhood products because they are our personal histories. Nobody else will ever understand as precisely well as I do how wonderfully purple my milk turns when I eat Berry Berry Kix. However, this nostalgic bias can create new bonds between people as well. Every girl with the memory of buying her first Backstreet Boys CD and listening to it on repeat for all of sixth grade will appreciate every other girl that hums, “you are (beat, beat) my fiiiiii--rrrrre” while flipping through the sale rack at the mall. Other times, our biases give us baked bologna, which our new friends will never understand, but which will always bond the graduates of St. Augustine Catholic School in a way that no other food could have. When television shows and salted, baked lunchmeats become our legacy, we must extract the best parts from them to claim as ours – their humor, their back-stories, and their familiar disasters.

Store Bought: Part 9

I remember that week in Belmont as stained peach and yellow and soft orange. The walls of the guest bedroom where Judy had moved were the color of a strawberry banana smoothie. The leaves outside were fiery yellow, red, and orange. People had pumpkins on their front porches, except us. The new comforter was goldish brown with autumn-colored smudges all over. The cancer had made Judy’s skin jaundiced. Yellow roses were Judy’s favorite, and even though it was late in the season, we noticed one blooming in her garden after the funeral.

Judy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on October 16^th, and she died less than a month later on November 4^th. I was 12 years old. A few weeks before, she had asked my mom to take her shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. She wanted a new comforter.

It is a testament to my grandmother that I feel comfortable calling her by her first name. My sister, Rebecca, my brother, Josh, and I were the oldest grandchildren by a decade. Judy was too classy to be the “Grammie” type of grandmother back then. The three of us still feel smug that we were the only “Judy” grandchildren.

During the weeks before and after her death, every time someone came in the house in Belmont, they were carrying at least one of three things: chocolate Halloween miniatures, a tray of four medium regulars from Dunkin Donuts, or a CVS bag of prescriptions.

For months after she died, there were still calls to the house asking if she’d like to picket for so-and-so issue for the Democratic Party.

I think I was about seven years old when Judy decided to have the kitchen remodeled. They took out a wall and expanded it into where the other living room used to be. Judy decided on chestnut-colored cabinets and a granite-top island in the middle. There were hardwood floors and a big table with leafs that could be added on for Thanksgiving.

Judy and Baba had the biggest bed I had ever seen. When we visited, I would go into their room in the morning and climb onto the vast mattress with the old blue and white comforter. Baba read the newspaper. Judy wore those pink silk pants and button shirt pajamas that people had in the movies. She bought me a pair to match.

Judy came into the living room where I was playing Barbies behind the couch one morning and I said, “What’cha up to, Judy-ba-doo-di?”

I loved visiting Judy and Baba’s house because there were different Barbies to play with and a dozen aunts and uncles patient enough to play with me. Once, Judy tried to take an old suitcase and line it with fabric for a Barbie box. She stapled all the material in and realized too late that she had also stapled the suitcase to the table. My dad told that story at her wake and we all laughed with red eyes and tight throats.

Judy surprised me with a giant shopping bag full of new clothes one spring. There was a green and yellow stripe FUBU shirt in there and neither of us knew that FUBU meant For Us, By Us. I proudly wore it around the streets of Boston.

There was also a spring dress in the bag. It was yellow with a band that tied around the waist. There were three daisy appliqués on the front of the waist ribbon that I will never forget. I hated them. When my mom made me wear the dress to my piano recital, I announced on the way that I wished a bolt of lightning would come and singe the daisies off of my dress.

The day after my 9^th birthday party, mom and I drove to Belmont, and on the way there I discovered hives on my face and belly and arms. I made reports up to my mom in the front seat along the way. Judy was a nurse and Baba, a doctor, so I was under close supervision for the whole weekend. When I came down for breakfast in the morning, Judy would inspect me, but she knew to be discreet. I didn’t want the whole family to see my speckled stomach, or worse, my pink cotton bra.

Anyone who knew Judy could tell you that she wore Chanel No. 5. She was the only person I ever knew to own a real fur coat, too, though I never saw her actually wear it. On holidays at Judy and Baba’s house, we used china plates and Waterford crystal.

I wasn’t born yet when she worked there, but my mom told me that she was a pediatric nurse at Boston City Hospital. Many of the patients she worked with were HIV positive.

Judy loved show tunes and she was determined that we, too, would know the classics. By the time I was seven, I could sing along to “Mein Heir,” “Two Ladies,” and “Don’t Tell Mama,” some of my favorites from our soundtrack of Cabaret.

In my dad’s barn, there is a framed photo of Judy in nylons and a skirt, sitting on Josh’s red Honda 100 dirtbike.

Store Bought: Part 8

No matter what my age, I will defend Barbies against any feminist with good, (but ill-directed) intentions to eliminate the plastic – and yes, generously proportioned – women whom I have loved since my childhood.

People say that Mattel is demeaning women by selling chesty dolls in skimpy suits. The truth is that Barbie-haters are not taking the time to get to know the young women who they are ruthlessly tearing down. The Barbies I grew up with were much more than long legs and a head full of air. My Barbies were scuba divers. They camped out in pillow caves on my couch. They opened their own shoe shops, complete with Lego display cases. They willingly wore the outfits that I made out of tissues and tape without a flinch in their uni-tooth smiles.

I say, if a girl can go camping in stilettos and her salsa dancing dress, more power to her!

Store Bought: Part 7

Belmont, Massachusetts was the magical land of stuff that I visited twice a month for the entirety of my childhood. It was the land of Chinese take-out, of Macy’s, of tickets to the Omni Theater, the planetarium, the movies, STOMP, Blue Man Group, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Boston Duck Tours. Everything could be done with the help of money in Boston – even parking. People paid to have their nails painted and their houses cleaned. They called taxis. They went to drive-thrus every day.

Belmont was where my grandparents lived and spoiled us rotten. One Christmas at their house, my brother burst into tears and announced, “I DON’T WANT TO OPEN ANY MORE PRESENTS!” It was Baba who funded my sticker collection and my connect-the dots-book collection and my jungle-themed stuffed animals collection. Judy would buy outfits for the three of us, and then, to our ungrateful dismay, pose us for pictures in the garden.

The Belmont house was fascinating to me. I would shift from room to room, holding cockle shells in my hand, admiring the china cabinet, running my fingers down the spines of books. There were four bathrooms, a baby grand piano, and bookshelves filled with CDs.

Besides my grandparents, the greater Boston area was also overflowing with aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles who would slip me ten dollar bills when they stopped by the Belmont house to visit. I would always save my money for weeks and then ultimately end up spending it on one of two things: Klutz art books from Barnes and Noble, or more art supplies at Michael’s Crafts.

Belmont became my other life. The one my friends didn’t know about or understand. The one that made me giddily impatient during the three-hour drive there. It was my glamorous life. The money fascinated me. I loved the shock of seeing the things people would pay money for in Boston. I don’t remember wanting to buy things with my own money while I was there. It was thrilling enough to watch other people shop and tip and order delivery. The lifestyle seemed foreign, but natural and lovable.

Store Bought: Part 6

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything that you already have. When my parents purchased our house, there was no plumbing, just an outhouse in the backyard. My dad used the boards from the outhouse walls as wainscoting in the new, real bathroom that he made for us which has plumbing and electricity.

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything you can make for yourself. A few winters ago, he asked to borrow my sewing machine and spent a weekend cutting and stitching together new fabric for his snowmobile seat. It didn’t look like a craft project when he was done with it, either. It was sleek and professional. Dad taught us that you don’t throw away something you can reuse. When the old movie theater in town was being demolished, my dad went and found old wrought iron railings that were going to be thrown out. They now adorn our staircase.

He taught us that you don’t buy something new that is just as good used. Our kitchen stove was made in 1917. It’s the kind that’s pearly white, and has long sleek legs, because the oven and stove are side by side. No one had thought to stack them yet.

He taught us that you don’t throw things out if you can fix them. My dad bought his snowmobile suit the year I was born for fifty cents at a yard sale. He still wears it, and every few weeks during the winter, he sits on the couch with a sewing needle, dental floss as thread, and patches the knees or the pockets or the zipper.

My dad has systems for cutting wood, stacking wood, and storing wood. Every year he makes new plans and sometimes draws little sketches in his notebook of how he will stack the wood this year so that we can fit enough in our garage to last us from the end of September though the beginning of May. Last year we didn’t have to turn on the thermostat for the oil furnace once, because we were able to keep the woodstove burning all winter long. My dad taught us that you don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

As a kid, these were difficult concepts to accept. New stuff is exciting. Did you know that other families have linoleum floors? In other houses, there’s a window on the oven door, and you can see dinner cooking without even opening it. Have you ever seen a movie on a big screen TV? It’s amazing.

As a young adult with a budget, though, it’s convenient to have grown up with a “cheap, cheap man,” as my brother, Josh, used to call him. There are so many things that people think they need – or want to need. Like anyone, I covet the unnecessaries – trendy nail polish, cell phones with lots of tiny buttons, cell phones with no buttons, and limited edition ice cream – but it’s more comforting than inconvenient to know that I will never be a victim of stuff.

Store Bought: Part 5

Check in later for more Store Bought posts.

Store Bought: Part 4

For us, Judy’s death was like one of those scenes when a guy walks through a door, looks down, and realizes there’s no floor and he’s just stepped off the edge of a cliff. None of us saw it coming and afterwards we realized that everything that we thought was normal and reliable about our lives was not.

Store Bought: Part 3

In my family, you were not allowed to open your toy until you finished your Happy Meal. Not that I ate Happy Meals very often. I bet I’ve eaten less than fifteen of them in my life. I’ve eaten enough, though, to remember that after you eat your french fries, your fingers get all greasy and it’s difficult to pry the plastic packaging open to get your miniature Barbie out. I remember the excitement of holding a warm bag of salty food on my lap on the way home from one of Rebecca’s hockey games. I remember sitting at the McDonald’s in Gardiner, Maine, with my Dad, dipping greasy nuggets into sweet and sour sauce and thinking that I was experiencing fine dining.

Around eleven or twelve – the prime age to switch from Happy Meals to Number Five Meals with soda instead of milk, and cardboard, not paper packages for fries – I stopped eating fast food almost entirely. I’m not sure why it happened. Maybe once my sister went off to college we spent less time on the road. Maybe I had learned to pack my own dinners by then. Maybe once I started running track my body craved more wholesome food. Maybe I was finally old enough to sit through the entire three hour trip to Belmont, Massachusetts to visit my grandparents a few times a month without needing to stop at the Kennebunk rest stop on I-95. Most likely it was a combination of all these things. It wasn’t a sudden decision on my part to protest fast food. It just happened.

During the fall of my sophomore year at Cony High School I was in cross country, jazz band, jazz combo, pep band, symphonic band, and piano lessons. Eating at the Bangor Street McDonald’s became a necessity some days, but I was surprised to find that I wasn’t hungry for Number Five Meals. I didn’t particularly want anything on the menu, except, perhaps, a Happy Meal. My memories of them endured, and I can truthfully admit that they were happy meals.

I didn’t get Happy Meals anymore, though. Usually I bought the Fruit and Walnut Salad. It wasn’t particularly good, but it at least didn’t make me queasy to look at like the burgers did. McDonald’s had slipped out of my identity. When I walked in, I no longer saw la vie en rose. I saw dusty corners and plastic forks in plastic wrappers. I saw a line that stood between me and symphonic band in fifteen minutes. And when I saw it like this – all naked and splotchy – I couldn’t defend it. I couldn’t convince myself that yellow-green pickles and moist hamburger buns tasted good.

Store Bought: Part 2

When somebody dies, the first thing you do is think about walking in their front door and seeing them look up from the magazine they are reading on the couch. You drop your keys on the counter and give them a quick hug. Then you think about how you can never, never do that ever again. Even if there is a God and you both somehow end up in heaven, you think about how it couldn’t possibly be as good as being able to see them in real life, with their worn in skin and marble eyes.

What you realize much later after someone dies is that the person will be gone forever, but the front door and the magazine and the keys are still there. Home & Garden will be what heals you. You’ll see it on the coffee table while everyone is clearing away plates and cups after the post-funeral brunch. For a few minutes, you’ll settle on the couch and flip through the pages. You’ll stroke the creases in the pages and fall into the advertisements for cabinet stains and luxury vacuum cleaners. An article about raised-bed gardens will catch your attention and a photograph of them will make your vision all blurry. Now every time you see Home & Garden, it’s like a squeeze on your hand.

Store Bought: Part I

For the last few months I have been working on a memoir called Store Bought, about how products can become heirlooms and what the limitations of comfort are in commercialism. The piece will be posted in sections, so keep in mind that to read the sections in order, you must read the oldest ones first.